


playing with ghosts

by dcuros



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Grieving, M/M, Spoilers, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 16:24:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17646212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dcuros/pseuds/dcuros
Summary: Late at night, Akira brews a particular blend, sets up the chessboard and chases the ghost of Akechi Goro





	playing with ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gosh, I haven't written anything in a while. Moving and school has kept me busy and missing number's outline is undergoing some major revisions.
> 
> This fic was inspired by [ this image ](https://twitter.com/a63466083/status/1091708618435571713) on twitter.

 

  
The air in the cafe was warm even in the late December evening.

It was also quiet. Its master had gone home hours before, left waiting for his daughter to come back. The many eyes and ears embedded in the cafe watched from parts unseen; now deaf and blind as Futaba had stumbled home with them, almost dead on her feet, and into the arms of her worried father. Morgana, Akira’s ever-present companion, was also absent— asleep in his bed upstairs, just as exhausted as Futaba after today’s ventures into the Metaverse.

Akira walked behind the bar, one hand running over the polished wood of the countertop as he searched out one particular brew on the shelf among many. He quickly found it, almost automatic in the familiarity of this routine, and set to work.

Beans, medium-coarse; water, just shy of boiling; two cups, and two filters; the pour— a slow and even stream despite the shakiness of Akira’s tired hands— then two sugars, followed by a splash of cream and two perfect cups of coffee laid side by side on the counter.

He slid one over to the space in front of him, eyes firmly fixed on to the steaming cups before him before moving on to the small box beside him, containing a chessboard and its pieces.

Akira unfolded the board on the countertop, and, one by one, placed each piece with meticulous care. First, a neat row of pawns, white first then black; then their rooks; their bishops; their knights; their queens; the white king. His hands grasped for piece after piece after piece in the box until he could find no more.

Finally, he dug into his pants pocket and fished out a small wooden figure: a black king, tossed to him just hours ago by Akechi before he went and wedged a metal wall between himself and Akira. Akira stared at it for a moment before setting it on its proper place on the board..

“Shall we begin?” he asked.

He picked up a white pawn near the center and moved it two spaces forward: Akechi’s usual opening. He met it head on with a pawn of his own: his own challenge in response to the other boy.

“How did that case with the jewelry store go, by the way?” Akira asked, moving pieces around, recreating a game half-remembered. Black bishop to white knight. “We were stumped when we talked about it a month ago, but I saw on the news that the assistant was arrested.” His queen captured by a white rook in retaliation. “How did you figure that out? Come dazzle me with your deduction, my dear detective prince.”

Silence— the only sounds he could hear were the soft clacks of wood as a piece met the board once again.

Unfazed, Akira pressed on. “Was it Mementos? It probably wasn’t too hard to get his Shadow to talk. Those guys get awfully chatty.” He lifted his cup to his face, breathing in the heady smell of Kona, and took a sip. Sweet, but not overly so, and carefully balanced against the acidity. “Must be convenient, huh, getting your suspects to tell you their secrets themselves. No wonder you got so famous so fast.”

Click. Clack.

“How long have you been using the Metaverse, Akechi?” Black knight retreated to c5, dodging a trap of Akechi’s, of Akira’s own doing. “Did you ever feel lonely down there? Just endless tracks leading up to nowhere and nothing but Shadows to talk to. We’ve been exploring it for months and it still doesn’t feel real.”

Akira made one last move: placing his bishop in sight of the white king. He sighed, “And that’s checkmate. It’s my win today, Akechi. That means the coffees are on you.”

After a beat, Akira shook his head and started packing up the chessboard. “Didn’t expect to lose, huh? Fine. I’ll make an exception for today. I’ll be winning again next time so prepare yourself.”

He tossed pieces one after another into the box before gently placing the two kings on top. “I’m closing up. Stay, go, I don’t care. Just help me clean up.” He brought the cups to the sink, pouring their remaining contents down the drain, and snorted in amusement as he rinsed them down. “Please, you’re hardly a customer. When was the last time you actually paid for your coffee?”

He wiped down the counter and moved to head back upstairs into his attic. From the stairwell, Akira scanned the cafe, checking if he’d left anything out of place for Sojiro to find in the morning.

A mass of brown grinned back at him, still sat in front of the bar.

Akira turned off the lights and went to bed.

* * *

 

The next night and the night after that, Akira found himself down in the cafe once again after Morgana had gone to sleep. Soon, his late nights— many, after the terrifying visions that appear in dreams— were spent in front of the chessboard, playing game after game and sipping on coffee that now felt too sweet on his tongue.

“Shido’s done. Are you happy now?” Akira asked Akechi one night.

“Would you have joined us in the ship?” Akira asked Crow the next.

“Did you ever regret it?” Akira asked the Black Mask.

But each time, the figure on the stool, a blurry silhouette that transformed to brown, to gold and white, to black and blue, would smile back but remain silent; the twist of his lips, both coy and challenging, faded but remained vivid in Akira’s mind.

His new routine broke on Christmas Eve. Their family’s little party had finished later than he’d hoped, and he had crashed into bed from exhaustion. In the wee hours of the next morning, he placed his bag down behind the counter, set the board, and played in silence until he’d placed the white king under checkmate.

“I forgot to tell you, Akechi.” Akira said, putting the board back in its hiding place. “I’ll be turning myself in today. You’ll have to find someone else to mooch coffee off of.”

He placed each piece back in the box, careful and deliberate, as if to stretch the remainder of his time. His hands found the black king, and then the white, and, after a moment’s deliberation, stuck them both in his pocket. He slung his bag over his shoulder and left.

Akira glanced back, the empty stools of the cafe visible through the glass windows of the cafe door. With a growl of frustration, he dug the two pieces in his pocket and dumped them both in the trash.

* * *

 

Leblanc looked, smelled, _felt_ the same as it did two months, when Akira had last walked away, and he predicted it would remain so five, maybe ten years down the line. There was something solid, unchangeable, about the place that settled in Akira’s bones and kept him grounded no matter how much he changed masks.

In such a place, Akira couldn’t help but fall into his old routines: a rowdy get-together with his friends; a few rounds of tinkering on his work desk; a set of pull-ups, more strained than before after weeks of inactivity; and a round of coffee and chess near midnight.

Or at least he tried to. The jar of Kona had been smashed to the ground, Sojiro had told him, during a minor earthquake. Tonight’s brew was Jamaican Blue Mountain and it tasted off in Akira’s unpracticed hands.

He had also set the board, and then each piece in his usual fashion until only two spots remained empty. He dug into the box, growing more frantic by the minute as his hands grasped nothing but air. He flinched as he remembered what he’d done, what he had thrown away, and began to play anyway— an aimless shuffle of pieces without an end in sight.

“I’m back,” Akira whispered. “I hope you didn’t miss me too much. Juvie was a lot worse than I thought.”

Akira looked up at the empty stool before him, his eyes straining to pick out the tiniest hint of brown or white or blue of his companion. But the seat in front of him remained empty, and the once vivid smile in Akira’s brain slipping from his memory.

‘This place looks haunted’, Akira had thought when he first arrived, and he was correct. The ghosts of customers past lingered in the smell and the heat of their brews. It seeped into every nook and cranny, into the very fibre of the tiny cafe, leaving a fading reminder of their once presence; that they were here and now they were gone.

Now, Akira was trying to grasp the last traces of a certain boy— one that had fought them, fought _with_ them, and paid the ultimate price for his goals— and he was failing. He felt the tears prickling at his eyes before they fell onto the black and white squares of the chessboard. He buried his face in his arms and sobbed as quietly as he could.

His heart pounded, loud and heavy in his chest until it was all he could hear. The tinkle of the door’s chime escaped his notice, but the soft clack of wood on wood, followed by another, had him looking up in confusion.

There, on the center of the board stood the missing kings.

"An interesting game, Kurusu-kun, but it’s not over yet.” said Akechi Goro, picking up his white king. “Shall we continue?"

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Yell at me in the comments or on my twitter [@hereliesandy](https://twitter.com/hereliesandy).


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